SAMTSIRHC

The title may confuse you, just read it backwards. I wrote it like that because I am participating in a reverse sort of Santa Claus situation.

Every other week, the trash company picks up household recycling. I put out my newspapers, used plastics, glass bottles and cans. They come along with a big truck and haul it all away. This is wonderful because the first six months I lived in Las Vegas I was in an apartment and there was no recycling. I collected my items and periodically drove them over to the university recycling yard and sorted and tossed. So, it was great to move into a house where trash pickup and curbside recycling was offered.

This year, I put recycling bins outside my classroom door and in the teacher's lounge, and every week I collect everyone's discarded plastic bottles to take home and put out with my stuff. In the past year, in the pre-pre-dawn, someone has been sifting the recyclables for the treasure of those containers marked "CA"--meaning the state of California pays a bounty for their return.

I'd never seen this person until about a month ago, when on the off-week (the non-recycling pick-up) I saw a fellow hiking around pushing his little cart and poking through the regular trash of people who (horrors!) throw out recyclable plastics. I called to him, and pulled out of my garage the overflowing bins I'd just brought home from school the night before and he smiled a big smile as he loaded it up.

The most recent Saturday, recycling day, I didn't have a chance to bring home my bottles--I left early on Friday due to vomit and I slept right through the trash/recycling trucks the next morning. But, tomorrow is the mid-week trash pick-up. (A Vegas exclusive: in the hot months, people really need their trash to go away frequently.) Well, knowing that I will be out of town on my next recycling day, I figured that I would be able to put out all my "valuable" plastic bottles and they'd be gone the next day. So, tonight about seven, I organized it all out on the curb by my trash can.

I went out to the curb about an hour later to drop off some smelly stuff directly into the trash can and (!!) "Look---atnaS has come and taken our bounty!" So, instead of putting out my empty wooden shoes, hoping that Kris Kringle will fill them in the night, I put out my filled recycling bins, confident that ---whoever---will empty them for me and haul all that used up plastic to California (just a short drive south of here) and turn them in for cash. Bless his heart---more power to him--we all win!